“No. Maybe.”
“It won’t hurt us.” Then Peter called on the radio to Karen King and Erika Moll, who were still at the top of the tree. “Danny and I are going to jump to the ground. You might as well do the same.”
Karen and Erika leaned out from a cluster of leaves. They couldn’t see the ground. Karen glanced at Erika, who nodded. “We’re cool,” Karen said on the radio, and she checked to make sure the blowgun was strapped tightly to her back. “One, two, three…” Erika jumped first, Karen following moments later.
As she fell into space, Karen spread-eagled herself like a skydiver. She went into a glide. “Wow!” she shouted. She could see Erika falling below her, and Erika was shouting. They were gliding, and it was controllable. Karen moved her legs and arms, and went off at a slant. She could feel the air flowing over her body, thick and soft, supporting her weight. This was like bodysurfing, except it was in air rather than water. She slammed into a branch and tumbled into space, unhurt, and spread her arms again, and surfed the liquid wind, descending through the tree. She saw Erika diving at an angle below her. Erika had gotten ahead of her, was falling faster.
Karen wanted to slow herself down. She rolled her body leftward and rightward, catching the air and using her arms and legs to slow her fall. “Whooo!” she yelled. Leaves were coming. She had lost sight of Erika…she heard Erika scream…
She burst through the leaves…and a spiderweb lay dead-ahead. Erika was trapped in it, bouncing up and down, thrashing her arms and legs, trying to escape. A pale green spider clung to the edge of the web…A crab spider…very poisonous…
Karen rolled her body sideways as she fell, her knowledge of this spider flashing through her mind. She needed to fall into the web. It was the only way to save Erika. Gotta hit the web. She had no fear. She could handle a crab spider…She slammed into the edge of the web and hung there, bouncing in midair.
To Karen, the web seemed maybe fifty or sixty feet across, far bigger than a safety net in a circus. Unlike a safety net, the web was sticky, its radial threads spangled with droplets of glue. She felt the glue soaking into her clothes, pinning her to the web, while Erika struggled in a blind panic, screaming for help, trapped in threads out of Karen’s reach. The crab spider seemed to hesitate. Possibly it didn’t recognize the humans as prey, Karen thought. But it would attack, she thought, and soon. The attack would come in a rush. “Hold still,” she called to Erika. She rolled herself over until she was facing the spider, and drew her machete. “Yah!” she shouted at the spider. Her eyes moved rapidly over the web. She was looking for a trigger line, and she saw it-a thread running from one of the spider’s feet across the spiral threads to the center. She flung herself across the web and cut the trigger line.
The spider used the trigger line to sense the presence of prey in the web. Cutting the trigger line was like cutting a nerve. It also alarmed the spider.
The spider suddenly fled, running away and tucking itself inside a curled-up leaf-its home.
“Most of ’em scare easily,” Karen said to Erika. She cut another thread, and the two women fell free, while Karen called back to the spider, “Sorry, sweetheart.”
They landed together on the ground amid a tangle of sticky silk. Erika was badly shaken. “I thought I was going to die.”
Karen pulled threads of silk off her. “Nothing to worry about as long as you know the structure of the web.”
“But I’m a beetle person,” Erika answered.
Peter and Danny landed nearby, crashing into leaves. Finally Rick appeared, lowering Amar with the help of the rope. They gathered in a group at the base of the ohia tree, and Peter explained the change of plan. They would head for Tantalus.
Ten minutes later, with Rick and Peter carrying Amar between them, they entered a fern forest, a seemingly endless maze of sword ferns, tall and dripping with moisture, arching over tunnels that ran in all directions. Koa trees, olopua trees, and white kokio hibiscus trees sprang from among the ferns, twisting into the upper story of the forest.
Peter sighted with the compass. “That way,” he said, and they began to walk down a long, winding passageway among the ferns. Fronds arched far overhead, covering the world in green.
Danny was stumbling along, when he stopped, stared at Amar Singh. Danny’s eyes widened. “He’s-he’s bleeding.”
Nobody had noticed. Rick lowered Amar, and Amar sank to his knees, while a rivulet of blood trickled out of one nostril and ran across his upper lip. The blood began falling to the ground in a steady drip.
“Leave me,” Amar whispered. “I have the bends.”
Chapter 26
Beneath the Green Canopy 30 October, noon
They’re hiding in there,” Telius said to Johnstone, looking through binoculars into a mass of sword ferns on the forest floor. The two men were hanging upside down in their seat harnesses in the hexapod. The machine, in turn, hung upside down from a leaf in the pandanus tree, clinging to the leaf with its feet. They had been able to get a fix on the radios.
Telius stared for a while, then gestured silently with one finger: Drop us.
Johnstone hit a button and the footpads let go of the leaf, and the hexapod went into free fall. Johnstone, working the controls, folded the legs under the vehicle as it fell. It tumbled a few times, its legs tucked underneath it, and hit the ground, and bounced, and came to rest upside down. The roll cage had protected the humans inside.
Johnstone popped open the legs. They lashed out and flipped the vehicle upright, and the hexapod moved off, stalking its way around the edge of the fern forest, and went into the ferns. Telius stood up and turned his head, listening. He had heard them talking. He indicated with his finger where the people were, then directed Johnstone to drive up a fern stem.
The hexapod climbed the stem, got in among the fronds, and stopped. Telius took up the binoculars and stared through them. He had acquired the targets. Six of them, down below. Somebody was sick, had a bloody nose. Might be the bends. The others were gathered around the victim. Indian guy, looked like. Blood streamed from the guy’s nose and over his upper lip and chin. Yup-the man had the bends. He was a goner. “Poor fucker’s having a bend bleed-out,” he murmured to Johnstone, who grunted.
As he studied the group, Telius identified the leader-slender guy, light brown curly hair, standing slightly apart and talking to the others, who listened. This was the individual who’d taken leadership of the group, Telius could see it. Telius could always tell an officer. You drop the officer first, of course.
A good setup. Telius nodded to Johnstone and took up the gas rifle and aimed it at the group’s leader, while Johnstone took up spotter duty, training his binoculars on the target and speaking to Telius. Telius looked through the scope and put the crosshairs on the leader’s head. The range was long, about four meters. A slight breeze stirred the fern leaf and the hexapod. Telius shook his head. Not stable. The shot was a little chancy, and Telius left nothing to chance. He would have to make several kills in quick succession on moving targets, because the moment he dropped the leader, the others would scatter like frightened rabbits. He gestured to Johnstone, meaning, get us lower.
Johnstone turned the vehicle, and it began creeping down the fern leaf, hunting for a more stable position. Then Telius signaled to Johnstone to stop. Telius unbuckled himself and fell out of the hexapod, spun once in the air, and landed on the ground on all fours like a cat, rifle on his back. He crept closer to the targets.
Peter broke open the medical kit and knelt over Amar, holding a compress to Amar’s nose. He didn’t know what to do. The nosebleed would not stop.
“I’m useless. Please go on,” Amar said.
“We’re not going to leave you.”
“I’m just protein. Leave me.”
“Amar’s right,” Danny said, touching his sling arm. “We have to leave him. Or we’ll all die.”
Ignoring Danny, Peter took the compress away from Amar’s nose; it was soaked. He had lost a lot of blood,
